“The ethos of the sabbath goes much deeper than an individual commitment to prioritize worship. It includes all of those sacred practices, both affirmations and prohibitions, that have been kept alive in Judaism and are being fitfully recovered by Christians.” Benjamin J. Dueholm

Ekklesia Project endorsers and friends may be interested in the Christian Century article quoted above which addresses the decline of rest in our society: The War Against Rest.

EP has explored this topic in a variety of ways.

Phil Kenneson discussed the church and rest in a talk (among other practices) at the EP Slow Church gathering and in his pamphlet, both titled “Practicing Ecclesial Patience” which you can listen to here or read here.

Chi-Ming Chien, EP board member and blogger, examines the tension between the economy we live in and the economy which God calls us to participate in:

“It’s ironic that, as we participate in the sharing economy, more and more of our lives get ceded over to the domain of the transactional. Where previously we might have a couch or spare room for a guest to crash in, now we rent it out. Where previously we might have offered an unused desk space in our office for a friend needing a place to work, now we list it and charge by the hour or by the day. Where previously (in antiquity, it seems…) we might have given someone a lift if we were headed their direction, now we charge for a Lyft. Interestingly enough in Lyft’s case, what started off as a suggested donation has moved toward fixed charges as the service has matured.

The core issue, as I see it, is that despite our best efforts, we continually get bent toward relationships characterized by transaction or exchange– what Jacques Ellul, the French sociologist and theologian, calls the Law of Money.”

EP’s Brent Laytham reflects on promises made by prominent acolytes of technology:

There’s an eschatology of sorts in the hubbub — indeed, in the hubris — that attends so-called technological revolutions. Apocalyptic always makes epochs determined by “before” and “after,” whether it’s the apocalyptic imagination undergirding the New Testament (e.g., “but in these last days…”; Heb 1:2, NRSV) or the one animating digital utopians like Edward Castronova (Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality [Palgrave, 2007]). The core question is whether that which dramatically changes everything is a “what” or a “who.” For Christians, even those entranced by the bewitchments of technological change, the answer must finally be who — for we know that grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ (John 1:17), not the latest technological revolution, no matter how remarkable.

Over Christmas I went bird watching near my parents house in Arkansas. Driving to a Wildlife Management Area I passed Lake Conway where nearly 7,000 barrels of oil spilled from an ExxonMobil tar-sands pipeline. The site in the lake nearest the spill still had containment buoys eight months after the accident. There was a man in a air boat and hazmat suit testing the water with hundreds of ducks and gulls and cormorants were feeding in the water nearby. Since then there have been other spills. Most recently West Virginia’s waters were poisoned by the ironically named, “Freedom Industries.” The damage done is beyond calculation and it will take years to know the full effects. These examples are just to name some of the ways in which creation is groaning in pain and eager longing for God’s Kingdom to arrive Read more